Early Music

Yo-Yo Ma does not believe in making things easy on himself.It was not enough for him that his sold-out concerts this week with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra would feature him in three concertos. The great cellist, perhaps the most popular string player in the world, is scheduled to play Bloch's "Schelomo," the late Stephen Albert's Cello Concerto and Bela Bartok's Concerto for Viola in a transcription for cello.But when Ma walks on stage at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to play the Bartok, a lot of people are going to gape.

Parisian baroque The lowdown -- Pro Musica Rara wraps up a very strong season with an appealing mix of baroque repertoire this weekend. The ensemble fulfills a vital role in the local scene, opening an aural window onto the past by performing early music on period instruments. Kenneth Slowik, artistic director of the chamber music program at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and a founding member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players and the Axelrod and Smithsonian quartets, among others, will be a guest artist on the viola da gamba.

Combine Italy and music and, chances are, opera comes to mind.But long before "Madame Butterfly" and "Aida," back in the 17th century, Italy was already a hotbed of musical creativity.Claudio Monteverdi, the first musical genius of the modern age, was crafting madrigals of uncommon sophistication in Venice, where his Marian Vespers of 1610 would provide the world with its first large-scale choral masterpiece.In Rome, Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674) was composing dramatic oratorios such as "Jepthe," which would inspire talented Europeans of the next generation (George Frideric Handel was one)

Some of this area's finest performers of early music on authentic instruments will join forces tomorrow and Saturday in the Music in the Great Hall series at Towson Unitarian Universalist Church. Viola da gambist Ann Marie Morgan, baroque violinists Richard Luby and Allison Guest Edberg, bass viola da gambist Lauri Bennett and theorbo player William Simms will perform music by Archangelo Corelli, Marin Marais and other French and Italian baroque composers.The models of antique instruments on which the musicians perform are recognizably the antecedents of those we play today.

By day, Goucher College physics professor Dave Baum studies ways to identify anthrax spores using ultraviolet light. In his free time, he indulges his enthusiasm for early brass music. Want to guess which endeavor is potentially more harmful to his health? The early brass, he says. Baum, 44, is at the center of a small but fervent circle of classical music lovers who are devoted to playing early brass instruments - trumpets, cornets and sackbuts (the precursor of the trombone) like those used in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Verdi's `Nabucco' The lowdown -- To the uninitiated, Nabucco might sound like another Japanese puzzle, but to opera fans it means a stirring drama with music to match. Nabucco (the Italianized name for Nebuchadnezzar) was Guiseppe Verdi's first great hit. In addition to telling a tale of Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews, the opera conveyed a subtle political message that galvanized the composer's Italian public, a message about freedom from foreign domination. Baltimore Opera Company unveils a new production of Nabucco this week starring vibrant baritone Mark Rucker in the title role.

Lovers of choral music don't need any prodding to catch the Boston Camerata's performance for the Candlelight Concerts series in Columbia. Under the direction of Joel Cohen, the exceptional, much-recorded ensemble has made a particularly vivid impression unearthing the rich heritage of American hymns and spirituals. For this appearance, the six-voice Camerata and a small instrumental group will recall both the secular and religious side of early American music, from William Billings' 1794 "Thomas-Town" and Shaker and Mennonite hymns to traditional folk songs and anthems.

SUNDAY R. KELLY: The controversial R&B crooner steps out of the limelight and into the spotlight at the Lyric Opera House, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave., at 7:30 p.m. Baltimore native Paula Campbell opens. Tickets are $75-$95. Go to ticketmaster.com. LUPE FIASCO: The coolest of the cool hip-hop artists to come up in recent years shows Towson University, 8000 York Road, how hip-hop saved his life. See the "superstar" at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20. Go to ticketmaster.com. PRO's POE: Pro Musica Rara, Baltimore's leading early music ensemble, is jumping into the bicentennial commemoration of Edgar Allan Poe with a program that features a reading of his story "The Cask of Amontillado," and such scary-sounding baroque works as Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata, Leclair's "The Tombstone" and Marais' "The Gall Bladder Operation."